'SNL' Fires New Hire Shane Gillis For Racist, Homophobic Remarks

Saturday Night Live has terminated one of its newest castmates, Shane Gillis, days after the internet has rounded up evidence of the comedian's racist and homophobic remarks.

"After talking with Shane Gillis, we have decided that he will not be joining SNL," an SNL rep on behalf of Lorne Michaels said in a statement via CNN. "We want SNL to have a variety of voices and points of view within the show, and we hired Shane on the strength of his talent as comedian and his impressive audition for SNL. We were not aware of his prior remarks that have surfaced over the past few days. The language he used is offensive, hurtful and unacceptable. We are sorry that we did not see these clips earlier, and that our vetting process was not up to our standard."

After the news went viral, Gillis spoke out about the axing via social media. "It feels ridiculous for comedians to be making series public statements but here we are. I'm a comedian who was funny enough to get SNL. That can't be taken away," he wrote in a lengthy note. "Of course I wanted an opportunity to prove myself at SNL but I understand it would be too much of a distraction. I respect the decision they made. I'm honestly grateful for the opportunity. I was always a Mad TV guy anyway."

Just last week, the NBC show announced Gillis, Chloe Fineman and Bowen Yang as regulars for the upcoming 45th season. Unfortunately, later that afternoon, Gillis' history for making bigoted remarks resurfaced, in particularly his defamatory comments about Chinese Americans and homosexuals during he and fellow comedian Matt McCusker's "Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast."